http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THERE IS LUCK, there is good luck, and there is the luck of
the Clintons. And we know, they are lucky because no first couple in history
has been as blessed by their enemies as the Clintons have.

President Clinton went through an agonizing period of scandal and
impeachment in which the public was forced to choose between him, Ken Starr,
Newt Gingrich and the House prosecutors. No wonder Clinton's popularity
soared.

And now Hillary Clinton, faced with a tough race for the U.S. Senate in New
York, has been blessed with an opponent who gives new meaning to the title
Mr. Insensitive. It was not so much New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's
adulterous affair that upset world-weary New Yorkers, but when he announced
on TV that he was separating from his wife without telling her first, this
seemed a wee bit coldhearted.

And then when Giuliani's wife went before cameras to denounce one of his
prior affairs, the battle lines were clearly drawn. As the Monica Lewinsky
scandal demonstrated, the public will accept adultery in high places as long
as the spouse stands by her partner.

Shortly after that scandal broke, the president flew to a huge outdoor
rally in Albuquerque, N.M., where a young woman held up a sign that seemed
to capture the feelings of many: "If Hillary Doesn't Care, Neither Do I."
And from the very first public accusations by Gennifer Flowers in 1992,
Hillary Clinton has always stood by her man.

Giuliani doesn't have that kind of luck. While his recent diagnosis of
prostate cancer did not affect his standing in the polls, his sex scandal
may be his undoing. As Doug Taggart, a previously undecided voter, Told the
New York Times, "Stick a fork in him; he's done."

Without a spouse standing behind him, Giuliani is alone and vulnerable.

Ester Fuchs, a professor of political science at Barnard College and
Columbia University, thinks the real impact will be to give Clinton the
breathing room she needs to reach out to undecided voters. "What is most
detrimental to Rudy is that while he now has to focus on questions about his
personal life, marriage and illness, Hillary has the luxury of focusing on
issues in her plodding campaign in upstate New York and chipping away at
Rudy's weak support up there," says Fuchs.

Rudy

And Fuchs believes that Clinton is far better suited to campaigning there,
her carpetbagger status notwithstanding, than Brooklyn-born Giuliani. "She
is unbelievably comfortable in upstate New York," Fuchs says. "She is a
Methodist, and most of upstate is Methodist except for some urban Catholic
pockets. She is from a Republican family. You watch her up there and you see
that she is more comfortable there than in black churches."

If Giuliani withdraws from the race -- a decision is expected before the
state Republican Convention on May 30 -- there are others waiting to take
his place. But Hillary has been raising money and campaigning for nearly a
year, and that gives her a decided advantage.

Former Mayor Ed Koch, no fan of Giuliani's, believes that he will either
drop out or be forced out by his own party, but it won't matter much if he
stays in. "He is injured irreparably for this election," says Koch. "When
you treat your wife shabbily in public, people get upset, and he has done
that."

Seemingly amazed that there is a major scandal that neither of them is part
of, both Clintons have refrained from adding to Giuliani's woes. Hillary
will make no public comment, and the president said last week, "I wish him
and his wife and their children well on the health front and on the domestic
front."

While Giuliani's campaign insists he has come to no decision about his
future, the mayor's own words last week did not seem encouraging. "I have
not made up my mind if I have the energy and the capacity to run," Giuliani
said.

How many candidates question their own capacity? Talk about the luck of the
Clintons?